The Howling Cliffs

Chapter 3

Chapter 3Sara helped Esmerelda into her small backpack, used for carrying water and some nibble food. As determined as Esmerelda was, it didn't make sense to load down a woman in her mid-seventies with a full pack, even if she projected a prodding mother whose strength never quit.

Huxley, Thanh and several others joined them. Huxley gave Sara a squeeze around her shoulders and a special smile. She could never get enough of looking into his eyes. She and he had been, after all, a couple for years. She had reached midlife and Huxley was four years her junior. Friends speculated they would one day marry. It might happen. They shared the same energy levels, much the same each had in youth. Now they shared a common purpose in life that bonded them. Sara and Huxley had long ago sealed their commitment to one another and talked of marriage, but plans never matured. Sara came to realize that Huxley would not allow himself much happiness till he brought his brother Rockford home before his aging parents passed away.

This being their third Vietnam trip together, Sara turned over her renovated Victorian mansion in the Sacramento River Delta to the control of artist and lifelong friend Daphine Whelan for charitable events that took place while she was away.

After purchasing the Victorian that Esmerelda once owned, and then finding Esmerelda's long missing and murdered husband's body buried on the property, Sara felt something shift inside her, something emotional that helped cement her feelings for Huxley. She felt great empathy for those who had lost a loved one. Then Sara and Huxley decided to join purpose and commitment in searching for cold case missing persons.

In her more quiet moments at home, Sara's ability to quickly create cyber games on DVD continued to earn her a fortune. Sara quietly sponsored the cost of Esmerelda's trips. She loved this stoic woman and felt her pain, and because the MIAs needed to come home.

“See here.” Huxley held the map and ran a finger along one of the lines representing the trail they followed. “Thanh said this stream used to have a deeper horseshoe curve.” He also held up a page of yellow note paper on which Thanh had drawn the trail as he remembered it from years past with a much deeper bend.

The group had already been on the trail more than a week covering areas previously searched, but this time making a sweep with the new dogs. The trail skirted rivers and streams at water's edge where some in the prisoner group could have drunk tainted water. Only at one point did the trail take them to the top of a sheer rock cliff overlooking a massive swiftly flowing river.

If anyone had fallen from there, or been killed by the VC and pushed over, it was certain their bodies would be swept away, or eaten by the vicious and hungry crocodiles.

Strong wind passing between the monolithic stone facades on both sides of the river made them sound like howling cliffs. That, the dense jungle and the raging river sounds would drown out any screams of prisoner s*******r.

They had entered a deep valley heading around the bend in a stream. According to the map, the flow came from the southeast on their left, crossed in front of them heading north, and then doubled back heading northeast on the right before it straightened heading north again.

“If Thanh is right, where we are right now is part of the new flow after the stream changed course.” Huxley couldn't hide his excitement. “The older flow where the prisoners were led is not more than quarter mile from here.” He shook a finger, pointing westward and turned to Palmer. “You don't remember this bend being deeper?”

Palmer shook his head. “I was too sick. What I remember was that after we crossed the stream, we were forced through nearly impenetrable jungle till we came to where the stream straightened.” He motioned with the sweep of an arm to the north. “In that direction.” He, like all the veterans Sara had met, still remembered nearly all details of the traumas their lived through.

Huxley studied the map intently. “So while we've been looking for remains along this portion of the stream, we should have been searching ahead there where the stream used to flow.” He seemed filled with a new energy and waved the map as a sign to the others.

“Move out!” He gestured the direction they were to head.

Others in the group, retired officers and enlisted alike, all carried metal detectors. Two Vietnamese cooks accompanied the group. When not preparing meals, they acted as spotters for the sharp-shooters. At any time, an animal might lunge out of the bush, not to mention the menacing snakes that sometimes hung out of trees and could slither down in front of your face. Thanh's cousin, now an expert marksman and another Yard carried high-power rifles. The man and wife photographic team from Honolulu shouldered their gear. The single vehicle, a refurbished military Humvee rigged for rugged terrain, carried tents, food supplies, ammunition and bare necessities of living on the trail. Oftentimes, the trail had narrowed, overgrown with trees and shrubs. If they couldn't be hacked away, the Humvee had to find an alternate way to advance and later meet up with the group. The vehicle was also for Esmerelda's benefit, but she never once used it as transport.

The next time Sara looked, Esmerelda was already crossing the stream, hopping from one rock to another. The thick cut branch she used for a walking stick helped keep her balance. To fall into the water was to invite a host of leeches. Since defoliation, those blood-suckers had returned like a plague, if they ever totally left. Esmerelda kept her head down and shoulders hunched, searching for any sign at all that someone's remains lay just below the surface, even in the stream.

Sara caught up to her while some of the men found a less rocky crossing point for the Humvee. A commotion caused Sara to look back again. One of the scantily clad Hmong cooks braved the stream by wading through the water. Several men yelled, frantically reminding him to stay on the rocks and boulders. Surely no fish thrived in that stream. Even if found and caught, they couldn't be eaten due to Agent Orange contamination. Now the medic would need to stay behind with him to burn away the many leeches clinging to the Hmong's calves and shins. If not removed quickly and treated, in tropical climate the lesions could become badly infected, in many cases, leading to death. Fortunately, the team was medically prepared for such emergencies.

“He's lucky he didn't meet up with a water snake.” Sara had to smile but also grimaced in disbelief. Vietnam was home to some of the world's deadliest snakes, such as the King cobra, Asian cobra, krait, coral, vipers and pit vipers. A sobering thought.

Esmerelda never hurried, studying every inch of ground along the way. The dogs were used to double search every inch of ground and, as well, through the brush at the trail sides.

During the war, once a person died on the trail, the body could be shoved into the brush and out of the way. The dogs dictated the pace of progress the group made. The canines were allowed to rout where they may and usually left an area when not detecting anything.

Sara also searched, poking and probing with her own walking stick. Surely, with the news of a new search area, a few heartbeats quickened. The quarter-mile patch of new forest between the stream and where it had previously flown had not been traveled. Sara hacked at the shrubs with a machete. One of the Yards came to lay waste to some stout hanging vines, clearing a new passageway for the others.

At a thinning of the overgrowth, Esmerelda pushed ahead impatiently and then stopped and screamed. “It's here! Thanh was right. It's here!”

The old stream bed was nothing more than a dry wash littered with rocks and boulders. The accumulation of boulders could only have been placed there by forceful running water. Bare patches of ground had settled, were smoother, and clear. They were warned that Agent Orange might still be strong in the soil, including the dry stream bed. The shrubs and trees were gangly, as if struggling for life, with no mangroves having been planted at this abandoned site.

Huxley and Palmer joined them. With no trees growing along the stream bed, the area was open and the sun shone through. Palmer gasped as he looked fifty to seventy-five feet across a smooth flat stretch. “We were here! I can feel it!” He pointed to the other side. “There, we walked that low embankment that followed the stream, over there.” He and Huxley bent over the maps again.

Esmerelda moved ahead and Sara caught up. Along the embankment, it seemed the trail had been widened with some boulders placed on the shoulder of the path to prevent anyone from falling over the edge. They began examining the ground and along the embankment.

Sara was following behind when Esmerelda looked ahead a short distance then stopped suddenly. Sara watched her curiously.

Esmerelda seemed to spot something. Then she began moving ahead in a hurry. “Over there, something… shiny!”

Sara followed, noticing that Esmerelda kept her gaze locked.

They stopped at a patch of ground three or four feet above the dry streambed. Esmerelda kept her sight trained on one particular area near some shrubbery, hunched over closer to the ground, and slowly scanned every inch of soil. Then she gasped. “I've found something.” Then she yelled. “I've found something!”

Sara stooped down. Something shiny lay on the ground. Nothing was wrong with Esmerelda's old eyes spotting the sun glinting off that tiny object. Deep scratch marks in the dirt indicated that an animal had dug up something but evidently found it inedible. A tiny piece of broken material lay bare. Metal would have rusted or rotted over the decades. This was yellow and gleamed. Surely, it was gold.